The times, they are a-changin': tracking shifts in mental health signals from early phase to later phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

Siqin Wang, Xiao Huang, Tao Hu, Mengxi Zhang, Zhenlong Li, Huan Ning, Jonathan Corcoran, Asaduzzaman Khan, Yan Liu, Jiajia Zhang, Xiaoming Li
2022 BMJ Global Health  
IntroductionWidespread problems of psychological distress have been observed in many countries following the outbreak of COVID-19, including Australia. What is lacking from current scholarship is a national-scale assessment that tracks the shifts in mental health during the pandemic timeline and across geographic contexts.MethodsDrawing on 244 406 geotagged tweets in Australia from 1 January 2020 to 31 May 2021, we employed machine learning and spatial mapping techniques to classify, measure
more » ... map changes in the Australian public's mental health signals, and track their change across the different phases of the pandemic in eight Australian capital cities.ResultsAustralians' mental health signals, quantified by sentiment scores, have a shift from pessimistic (early pandemic) to optimistic (middle pandemic), reflected by a 174.1% (95% CI 154.8 to 194.5) increase in sentiment scores. However, the signals progressively recessed towards a more pessimistic outlook (later pandemic) with a decrease in sentiment scores by 48.8% (95% CI 34.7 to 64.9). Such changes in mental health signals vary across capital cities.ConclusionWe set out a novel empirical framework using social media to systematically classify, measure, map and track the mental health of a nation. Our approach is designed in a manner that can readily be augmented into an ongoing monitoring capacity and extended to other nations. Tracking locales where people are displaying elevated levels of pessimistic mental health signals provide important information for the smart deployment of finite mental health services. This is especially critical in a time of crisis during which resources are stretched beyond normal bounds.
doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007081 pmid:35058303 pmcid:PMC8889467 fatcat:csakz6gkbzgjndbhpbrac37bsm